Certain memory sticks no longer work for students

[sidewinder]

Never had a problem under XP but a rather ugly problem has reared its head with 7 - some brands/types of memory sticks will not install automatically for students - so nothing happens and they cannot access them. However some work fine.

 

I dont see how this is happening...all the drivers are Windows drivers so if it can install some, why not the others? All the affected ones work fine with an admin account logged on.

 

Is there a GPO setting we have missed?

[Kitty]

Very interested in the solution, as we are sure to come up with the same problem soon! Thank you in advance!

[mrbios]

How about the computer configuration policy of "Allow non-administrators to install drivers for these device setup classes" i'm not sure what the device class ID is for removable storage though

 

There's also "allow installation of devices that match any of these device IDs" in the device installation section

 

Worth a look i guess

[sidewinder]

Thanks...I will have a look at that.

 

It seems to only affect certain hardware, which is odd. Just tried on a laptop up here, expecting to be able to replicate it not working, but every stick I've tried has worked! Weird

[mrbios]

Are your machines restarted on a regular basis? as simple/silly as it may sound i found back when our PCs were left on day in day out eventually USB sticks would become more and more problematic until the PC was restarted, now we have them turning off every night it's not been an issue - and that was after trying all sorts to fix it, was also the reason we could never replicate the problem

[sidewinder]

They're all switched off every night via a script...however I will check the ones I know are affected in case they havent been - all are desktops rather than laptops

[SYNACK]

The affected keys aren't the U3 type that try to autoboot their own environment are they.

[sidewinder]

No..well some might be, but I saw some students trying to use theirs and they were either Kingston ones or some generic brand

[SYNACK]

Got any AV packages or USB drive letter remappers that may be jumping in before the device finishes mounting properly?

[Don__1]

Windows 7 doesn't Autorun from USB pen drives so any that use that to 'mount' themselves will have issues.

[sidewinder]

Got any AV packages or USB drive letter remappers that may be jumping in before the device finishes mounting properly?

 

Sophos is running...but wouldnt expect that to be doing anything. We used to use USBDLM but havent redeployed it yet.

 

 

Windows 7 doesn't Autorun from USB pen drives so any that use that to 'mount' themselves will have issues.

 

Interesting, I didnt know any did that! But I would imagine it's not that as it works if I'm logged on

[SYNACK]

Sophos is running...but wouldnt expect that to be doing anything. We used to use USBDLM but havent redeployed it yet.

 

Never underestimate the mess an AV can make of things, are you running the very latest version 64bit version (assuming your using x64) for Windows 7.

 

I have had NOD32 kill Windows Installer and deadlock program resources, had older versions of Symatec stuff cause weird issues to. If you can replicate try on a machine with the realtime AV disabled or even better uninstalled temporarily.

[sidewinder]

As is often the case with me, the solution was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. And pretty much my own fault

 

As said, we used to use USBDLM. Which forced all memory sticks to take a letter starting from H. Now we arnt using it (think I might reconsider that!) then the GPO restricting students from using drives A-D was taking effect - on all desktops (which dont have CD drives) the memory sticks were trying to take drive D!

 

So changing that restriction to drives A-C has solved it totally. Nothing to do with drivers. Whoops

 

Thanks for all the help though everyone